Some thoughts.

In these times of great tribulation it is worthwhile, I think, to carefully consider one’s situation. Some, of course, might not agree with me but I derive my thoughts from a variety of sources – some very old – for instance the Ancient Greeks.

Fate, or Chance, or Providence does not play a fair game with us humans. It does not abide by any rules; is not moved by any considerations; is not turned aside by any prayers; or made malignant by any curses. Its onset can neither be retarded, nor hurried, tempered nor envenomed, avoided or way-laid by anything we do.

Why blame it? It moves at its own inexorable pace towards its own determined end.

It is we, humans, who make the rules of the games we play, who plead for consideration, who try to shelter behind the situations we caused. Why blame it if we are thin skinned, if we are unready, if we are cowards, if we did not for-see the consequences, if we are fatuous enthusiasts for our causes?

All we should know is that there is no armour, no shield, no antidote. Some of us trust in fortitude, some in fatalism, some in a hereafter, and a few hardy ones in a grim, derisive, humorous cynicism.

And if at the end of things our trust fails – it does not matter! 

To again quote from The Rubaiyat, by Omar Khayyam, quatrain 52:-

And that inverted Bowl we call the Sky,

Whereunder crawling coop’t we live and die,

Lift not thy hands to It for help – for It

Rolls impotently on as Thou or I.

But then as with Pandora's box - there is always Hope!!

Australia and the Portuguese discoveries

A few reflections on history never go amiss. For instance who “discovered” Australia? Of a certainty the “First People” arrived here over 65 000 years ago. I mean who were the first Europeans to see and or visit Australia? A Brit - Capt Cook? The French? The Dutch? The Portuguese?

In my humble opinion that honour must fall to the Portuguese. Just look at their time line in the Indian Ocean area:-

·      Vasco De Gama rounded the Cape of Good Hope in 1488.

·      Just off the coast of Western Australia near the city of Geraldton are the low lying Abrolhos Islands. It has been asserted by some that Abrolhos is an English corruption of the Portuguese phrase Abre-olhos!  - which roughly translates as “Open your eyes!” or “Look out!”

·      The enclave of Goa, on the West coast of India, was established in 1498. 

·      The small Island of Timor (just 285 miles – 460km, North of Australia) was colonized in 1516.

·      It is generally believed that Cristovao Mendonca sailed down the East coast of Australia in about 1521.

·      Mendonca had three ships in his little fleet but only one returned. One ship was lost in a storm – last seen heading East across the Tasman Sea towards what is now New Zealand and one ship was wrecked. This wrecked ship is possibly the origin of the “legend of the Mahogany Ship” alleged to be in the sand dunes near Warnambool, on the coast of State of Victoria. 

With all this, admittedly circumstantial evidence, to my way of thinking, it would be impossible for the Portuguese navigators to have “missed” Australia. That just doesn’t make sense to me!!

All this is complicated, however, by the secrecy surrounding these Portuguese voyages. Most of Australia - “Java le Grande” – on the early maps was in the Spanish sphere of influence. In 1494 the Pope Alexander VI – after some dispute with the Portuguese King Joao II – decreed the Treaty of Tordesillas in 1494. This Treaty split the world into two – the Portuguese sphere stretching from part of the East coast of South America (now Brazil) to a line which is almost the State line between Western Australia and the other States. 

This is why Brazilians speak Portuguese but Argentina, Peru, and Chile and other countries in South America are Spanish speaking and why Timorese speak Portuguese whereas people in the Philippines speak Spanish. 

Another complication was that because of the rivalry with Spain and the secrecy involved, all Portuguese Captains involved in these explorations, had on the pain of death, at the completion of each voyage, to hand over to the Maritime Archivist in the Casa da India, all log books, maps, charts and journals. This was to comply with the Politica do Sigilo (The Policy of Secrecy).

Nothing can now be categorically proved as these carefully stored historical documents were totally destroyed in the great earthquake and resulting fire in 1755, which demolished much of Lisbon.

Reflections

These are testing times indeed! This is a time for reflection; a time for understanding; a time for empathy; a time for a reassessment – about life and how it’s lived. More than anything I believe this is a time to put aside any differences, opinions and strongly held beliefs. 

We are all human beings trying to survive.

To put this into perspective, we are, all of us, members of the species Homo Sapiens crowded together on a small planet in a very average solar system circling around a very average star, amongst billions of stars, at the edge of an arm of a very average spiral galaxy among an unimaginable number of many billions of galaxies in an unimaginably large universe. 

I fully realize that what I’m about to write may be controversial, possibly inflammatory and most definitely blasphemous! But I still need to ask the question - why do we, puny beings that we are, think we are so special? That God (however He, She, It is determined) is “our” special God? 

Now, don’t get me wrong, I believe in a “higher force” – something that imbues objects (us, amongst others) with “life”. But what that “life” is has yet to be determined. Something that is alive is not “dead”. But what is absent or withdrawn to render what was alive, dead – has, as I say, yet to be determined. Personally I doubt that we will ever truly know. 

As always in moments of high drama or deep reflection, as now, at this time, I turn to poets and poetry. Poets seem to have a greater insight into the human condition than more down to earth mortals such as I.

I have always loved The Rubaiyat, the famous poem by Omar Khayyam (18 May 1048 – 4 December 1131) a Persian who followed the Sufi version of Islam. Khayyam was an astronomer, astrologer, physician, philosopher, and mathematician: he made outstanding contributions in algebra. In the year 1072 CE Omar Khayyam documented the most accurate year length ever calculated up to that date – a figure still accurate enough for most purposes in the modern world. But it is his poetry for which he is better known in the West than any other non-Western poet – in particular his Rubaiyat, translated (possibly somewhat loosely) by Edward Fitzgerald.

To follow on what I said about a “higher force”, I offer the following Quatrains (verses) from the Rubaiyat starting with:

 7

Come, fill the Cup, and in the Fire of Spring

The Winter Garments of Repentance fling:

The Bird of Time has but a little way

To fly – and Lo! The Bird is on the Wing.

11

Here with a Loaf of Bread beneath the Bough,

A Flask of Wine, a Book of Verse – and Thou

Beside me singing in the Wilderness –

  And Wilderness is Paradise enow.

23

Ah, make the most of what we yet may spend,

                                               Before we too into Dust descend;

Dust into Dust, and under Dust, to lie,

        Sans Wine, sans Song, sans Singer, and – sans End!

49

‘Tis all a Chequer-board of Nights and Days

Where Destiny with Men for Pieces plays:

Hither and thither moves, and mates, and slays,

And one by one back in the Closet lays.

50

The Ball no Question makes of Ayes and Noes,

But Right or Left, as strikes the Player goes;

And He that toss’d Thee down into the Field,

He knows about it all – He knows – HE knows!

51

The Moving Finger writes; and, having writ,

Moves on: nor all thy Piety nor Wit

Shall lure it back to cancel half a Line,

Nor all thy Tears wash out a word of it.

52

And that inverted Bowl we call the Sky,

Whereunder crawling coop’t we live and die,

Lift not thy hands to It for help – for It

Rolls impotently on as Thou or I.

53

With Earth’s first Clay They did the Last Man’s Knead.

And then of the Last Harvest sow’d the Seed:

Yea, the first Morning of Creation wrote

What the Last Dawn of Reckoning shall read.

And so it goes on.

Khayyam must have been a cynic who liked his wine, and I certainly think he had, shall I say, a rather  “irreverent” relationship with God! 

I will also say that what I determine to be Khayyam’s beliefs are in line with mine. That we determine our own fate by what we do - good, bad or indifferent. We reap what we sow!